Sunday, September 29, 2013

Here comes
the newly insured. They are not in ACOs. Some will have chosen high deductible plans. Some have even chosen narrow networks to limit
their premium cost.Some of the newly
insured will be in the expanded Medicaid program.What we do know is that it will be a potpourri
of ages, sex, income, health status, relationship status and education. We know that there will be a lot of people who
never had access to health insurance.

So how do you
market to the newly insured, knowing that the probably haven’t seen a doctor in
a few years? They most likely don’t have a primary care physician. And when
they needed care as the uninsured, they most likely used Emergency Rooms as their
primary source for medical care considering themselves to be ER frequent flyers. They will be less healthy and in need of
navigation though your healthcare system. They
can be a financial godsend to your hospital or a drain depending on their medical
condition and source of payment.

Because you
waited until now to start marketing, the chance to establish a relationship with
the newly insured prior to the opening of the HIX and that insurance purchase
has been lost.Now you have to compete.
And telling the newly insured you have the best doctors and most caring staff
is right out of the nineties and meaningless.

The healthcare
market is changing and these people are paying out of pocket and they will be paying
attention to price, quality and experience. So it is really along these three dimensions
that you need to focus your integrated strategic marketing efforts.

Push the
newly insured to the primary care doctor.Pull the primary care doctor to the hospital.

Push the
newly insured from the emergency room to free standing clinics and other less costly settings.

Engage the
newly insured in meaningful ways along price, experience and quality.

Look out for Walgreens
and CVS Caremark, Rite Aid and others whose retail clinic strategy is perfect
for the newly insured, and will limit their out of pocket expenses better than
you can. Look out for the hospital or health
system that will be the first in your market to engage the newly insured in meaningful
ways along price, experience and quality.

The age of semi-retail
healthcare is now beginning.That means
the healthcare consumer, aka the newly insured, have some leverage and bargaining
power.Meet their needs and establish a meaningful
relationship on their terms, or keep doing what you have always done in marketing
and watch them walk away.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Patient
experience and satisfaction is no longer a nice too have, but a got to have in the
evolving consumer-centric healthcare market place.Consumers are paying more out of pocket and
when consumers pay more they expect more.A better healthcare consumer and patient experience in the end means
a more compliant patient pre and post treatment. Higher level of service and medical process
satisfaction brings the healthcare consumer back in a sea of providers who all
offer the sameness.It is one of the primary
drivers for a reason to return. And when all things are equal and undifferentiated,
experience and satisfaction become a major determination of return and for their
recommendations of you.

Difficult to
achieve and tough to competitively beat once you have it, experience and satisfaction
with your medical products, clinical services and processes regardless of the
vertical, be it specialty pharmacy, medical device,pharma, hospitals, doctors etc., will drive
revenue.Revenue from the standpoint of
Pay-for-Performance (P4P) programs and volume from healthcare consumers aka
patients, selecting you in a very commoditized and provider undifferentiated
healthcare market place is at stake.

Not everyone
will be in an ACO or risk-sharing agreements.Some will choose narrow networks to save a buck on premium. Fee-for-service
will still be around for awhile.The opening
of public insurance exchanges in October, 2013, Medicaid expansion in some states and the now becoming
ever more popular the private insurance exchange where companies are moving to defined contribution
(see Walgreens, Sears and others in recent times), means that you have a direct
to consumer opportunity along very different dimensions then in the past.

The
healthcare consumer of today will view your services as: value= f(cost, quality, satisfaction) as compared
to the near past where value= f(cost,
quality). Value as described by the healthcare consumer here is the result of
the function of cost, quality and satisfaction with you.

Why is it important:

High levels
of experience and satisfaction are a powerful differentiator in your market.

Done correctly,
your experience improvement and satisfaction program becomes the ongoing Voice
of the Customer (VoC) program to drive real organizational change.

I

t is a
strategic and tactical edge for your brand and your marketing communication
efforts.

Think
customer evangelization.

Think of the
power of a high-quality experience and exemplary satisfaction and what that can
do for your organization. Think of what it can do in your effort to
differentiate.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Sometimes,
another organizations PR missteps are an opportunity to learn how not to handle
a PR crisis.Just ask the any of the hospitals
and health systems that have been in the media the past few weeks with HIPAA
violations for data beaches. And what I
have seen from the healthcare consumer side in the coverage and their responses
have been arrogance, apathy and really stupid responses by senior management.

I mean
really, “We had a panic button and security camera.” Does it matter in your response that the theft
happened after hours? Or the, “We had 60
days under the law before we had to report it.” How do you think the public reads that answer
of hiding behind regulations when their personal data is at stake?

In an age of healthcare
model evolution from provider-dominated models of decision making to consumer-directed
models, those bygone days of being able to mismanage a PR crisis and response and
get away with it are gone.

Is your
response to dive for under the desk? Do you send out poorly prepared underlings,
to face reporters and the public? Does leadership, make proud pronouncements at
the outset, that could come back to haunt you because at this point, you just
don't know?Do you react as an arrogant organization with
the, "How dare you question us response"?Do you think that it can never happen to
you? Do you have a crisis communications plan in place?

Every healthcare
organization will face a PR crisis. How you handle the communications, will
determine the amount of brand damage and length of time people remember, the
good and the bad. In this age of social
media and the Internet, there are no, "We just need to wait 3 days to
weather the storm", anymore.

Many times
organizations respond with:

·Lack
of organizational understanding of the need to handle a situation as crisis
communications;

·Different,
conflicting senior management messages;

·Testy
responses to questions;

·Lack
of preparation by speakers in understanding the seriousness of the
communication;

·Poor
speaker body language;

·No
overriding organizational message;

·Organizational
arrogance;

·Lost
messaging opportunity;

·Appearance
of blaming others;

·The
organization appearing not accountable;

·The
organization furthering to anger the media;

·No
response at all with the "it's just a three day story and will go
away";

·Sending
out unprepared underlings to face the media;

Is it not
true that any press is good press! Every
day, someone somewhere faces a crisis communications issue which is poorly handled.

By following these planning guides, you can weather any storm, limit
reputation, revenue and ultimately brand image damage:

·Understand
the nature of the situation;

·Be
transparent;

·Be
proactive in how you intend to address the situation;.

·Limit
the amount of time senior leaders i.e. the CEO or president speak;

·Understand
that your reputation is built up over a long time and can be destroyed in a few
short minutes;

·Remember
that it is not just a three day story;

·Watch
your body language;

·Know
your facts about past performance, reporters will be prepared;

·Learn
from others;

·Each
year engage in a day of media training for executives. Dealing with the media
is a learned skill that the majority of executives do not have.It is not as easy as it looks.

Most
importantly, engage the media all the time all year round not just when you
have a problem.By establishing positive
media relations with the good you do, you won't necessarily be cut any slack in
a bad situation, but you will get the opportunity to tell your side. You won't if you don't have good media
relations already in place.

Plan now for
that crisis communications event, and you will better off as a prepared
healthcare organization.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Health insurance
companies and governments are gearing up to spend millions in educating the
healthcare consumer regarding purchasing health insurance in a HIX come October
1. But is there any guarantee that they will
choose a plan that includes you? Or is this something left to chance?

You have a
very big stake for participating actively and reaching out to the potential insured
marketplace to choose plans that include you.

These first
time buyers are going to include those who are employed, whose companies
decided to throw in the towel on a cost basis in favor of a defined
contribution benefit, and send their employees on their merry way to buy their
own coverage.That is if they don't drop
their hours below the threshold for mandated employer insurance first. Or, they
could opt to pay a penalty for not providing healthcare coverage which in some
cases will be cheaper than providing coverage.

So where is
the marketing opportunity for you because not everyone will be eligible for expanded
Medicaid coverage?

In case you
are thinking that all you have to do is sit back and deal with the new demand
for care, how can you be sure the newly insured healthcare consumer will choose
plans that include you from the HIX? Right now you can't. Unless of course you
start an educational marketing program that educates about insurance and the
value you bring to the healthcare consumer by you being included in their
choice of plans networks. That also means price, experience and outcome transparency.

This is more
than negotiating with every plan available, and being included. In the brave
new world of healthcare reform moving an industry to a consumer-directed
system, purchasing health insurance is going to become very quickly a big deal.
And in some pilots its already been learned that when there is a 10 percent difference
in premium, the healthcare consumer exhibits consumerist shopping behavior, and
chooses the lower cost health plan with the narrower restrictive provider panel
limiting their choice, Wall Street Journal article on Friday, March 1, 2013, "Another Big Step in Reshaping
Healthcare".

You have a
real opportunity with an effective healthcare marketing campaign to influence
choice at this point in time which will have a direct bottom line impact. Wait
and it will be too late to influence the newly empowered healthcare consumer
plan and network choice.

Opportunity
like this knocks only once. I hear someone at that the door, better answer.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Given the extraordinary competing
needs in healthcare organizations to meet the new reality of the healthcare market
place from EMRs to employed physician, too new treatment and diagnostic modalities
and declining reimbursements, marketing gets the short straw most of the time
in those resource allocation decisions. And that is a dangerous position to be in when
a market is evolving to a semi-retail, consumer-centric model.

But when you have
constrained marketing resources, and you have to have a continuous presence in the market
place to shift healthcare consumer’s attitudes, preferences and choices, the
triple combination of earned media, public relations and social media working
in a strategic, integrated fashion can achieve that end for you.

Make no mistake about
it, combining social media, public relations and earned media is hard. It is
much more than a press release or an event. You have to develop relationships
with reporters. You have to plant and cultivate story ideas. You have to
respond to reporters request for more information. It takes time. It takes
patience in a period of time where all we ask on a daily basis is, "What
did you do for me today?"

You need to find ways
for reporters and editors to follow your tweets. They have to be exposed to your
blog or your company pages on LinkedIn, YouTube or facebook. That’s the value
in earned media and public relations by integrating those efforts with social
media. It becomes your ability to establish a powerful continuous presence by
expending human resources with the talent in your marketing operation not
financial. And the payoff by combining the three in an integrated strategic fashion
can be huge.

Earned media and public relations
driving social media have value.

Al

l that content that
goes online comes from somewhere and has to go somewhere.A reporter has to write it.A network broadcaster has to cover it.
Columnists look for it.It goes out on
facebook, web sites, YouTube, twitter and electronic / print editions of
magazines, daily newspapers and specialty publications.

Earned media and public relations
can become viral in social media because it has so many different outlets.When a news outlet or publication carries
your brand messages, it makes what you are doing seem more believable.Once the story runs about a topic and you're
the first, it's much harder for your competitors to get out there with the same
message. A powerful way to differentiate
yourself which also has a considerable number of aftermarket uses.

There is a bigger payoff
too.

Every organization will
experience a communications crisis. Taking the time to develop positive relationships
with reporters, blog writers, broadcast media and others has a big payoff in a
media driven crisis. The development and cultivation of a relationship with
media doesn't mean that the story won't run. But what it can mean is the
difference between a story that is balanced and fairly reported, versus a story
that is one-sided against you.As we all
know, negative news about travels farther and faster than positive news, which
does more harm than good over the long haul.

So, maybe it's time to rethink
in an era of declining healthcare marketing resources traditional marketing activities, to
changing your markets with earned media, public relations and social media?